Meet Ptch: a potpourri of social multimedia sharing

If everything is a remix, Ptch is the ultimate social app remix. Imagine the mobile-first interface of Path combined with the brevity of Twitter, the re-blog options of Tumblr, and the filter options of Instagram. While it’s unclear if users will want an app with all these functions, there’s no question it’s a cool way to remix your own music and video into a short film.

Ptch, the mobile video production app that’s officially launching in the U.S. on Thursday, is backed by Dreamworks Animations and led by Dreamworks CTO Ed Leonard. The app is free to download for the iPhone or iPad in the iTunes store, and a web component is coming soon.

Basically, Ptch (pronounced, “pitch”) lets users create a 60-second photo slideshow or video mashup set to music. It then lets them share that work with friends via social media, who can then remix those creations and make their own additions or changes. If a Ptch is reshared and edited, users will be able to track those changes and see what ideas originated from which person.

I don’t have a huge interest in watching or creating videos on my iPhone, but within a few minutes of downloading the app, I found myself dragging and dropping my favorite Instagram photos into my 60-second “Ptch” window, picking a filter to put on top of all those photos, and selecting the best music to play over it. Here’s what the dashboard looks like:

For me, my Ptch became like an Instagram slideshow set to music, and I could see myself creating one for photos I’d taken on a trip, and then sharing that Ptch with friends. Goodbye, 10-minute slideshows of someone’s vacation. At least if someone took terrible photos, you wouldn’t have to watch more than 60 seconds of them. And even though I have absolutely zero video experience, my final product looked pretty cool. Users can choose to make their final products public or private, and lock them to prevent others from editing them if they’re public.

There are certainly plenty of other video-sharing apps out there, but Leonard said he thinks the customization and limitation of a users’s choices which have been so popular with apps like Instagram will play well with Ptch. There’s also plenty of funding in the area right now. A recent report by CB Insights found that 13 percent of Q2 deals were in the mobile sector, marking an all-time high, with 30 percent of those companies involved in photo or video technology.